


Reflect

by Hedgi



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode Reaction, Gen, Introspection, Look I'm having emotions so I'm gonna make you all suffer with me, all aboard the pain train, because that's just who I am babes, character death from their own point of view
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24281818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: She is a tool, a reflection with all the memories needed to play a part, nothing more. She will obey. Success is assured.She is a pawn, a reflection who remembers what it is like to be loved, but does not know.  She will obey. Success is assured.She is a weapon, a reflection made to mislead and misguide and hurt. She will obey--she will obey-- Success is assuredShe is-- she is-- she is--More.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West mentioned
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	Reflect

**Author's Note:**

> “I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
> 
> \-- Mary Oliver

She is a tool, a reflection with all the memories needed to play a part, nothing more. She will obey. Success is assured.  
  
She’d almost come to think of the loft as Home. It wasn’t, not really, but the thin, silver-backed glass wall between the memories she held and the orders that she was made from seemed to ripple, sometimes. She could reach into that still pool and remember, standing in the doorway and breathing in, she could remember standing in the moonlit window while Barry sang, she could remember sitting on the couch, surrounded by broken glass, alone. But all the memories of here, of what Home was, what it felt like, they weren’t hers. Everything that she remembered hit that glass barrier and reminded her what she was, and why she was here.   
  
This world was not her own, though it would belong to her Mother, soon. Success was assured, after all. Eva had a plan, and she was only one fragmented piece of it. She did not need to know the whole thing; the curiosity she felt was only a phantom. Iris was the one to be curious, and she was only a copy of that. Of course she thought she was curious, thought she wanted answers, that was only proof that her Mother was powerful, that the copied memories were strong and true and held all the keys to manipulating this world as Eva desired. Success was assured, and soon--   
  
And soon Eva would be free to walk both worlds, no need of puppets and mirror children. They were only tools. She wondered if it had hurt her sister, to walk into the barrier of Bloodwork's cage and die. She had screamed. It must have hurt. But Eva’s will mattered more than hurting-- she knew that. She did, really.   
  
She didn’t have doubts. She had--ideas, that was all. Not doubts. She had not been made for doubts, or feelings, or human things. She was what her Mother wanted, the mirror image of the threat, the perfect way in, the weapon. She’d followed her orders, and she’d follow them still. Her Mother had made her, and stuffed her full of memories, and told her to do what was necessary.   
  
She had obeyed. She would obey. Lie to preserve the truth, but sometimes she could hear the memory of a voice in ears that hadn’t been hers: _“How can you say that when the most important things in your life, the things that matter the most, the things that you're supposed to share, you kept all of them from me?”_ She had not said them. She could remember the way they tasted on her lips.   
  
She is a pawn, a reflection who remembers what it is like to be loved, but does not _know_. She will obey. Success is assured.  
  
She looked around the loft, all the familiar things that weren’t hers to be familiar with, and something ached. She caught sight of herself in the mirror directly before her and closed her eyes a moment. Heartache, she named the feeling. That wasn’t right. She should know this from memories only, not experience. She had no heart to ache. _Breathe._ She ordered herself, and she obeyed. That was her duty. Obey, do not question, and success would be assured.   
  
It was only the memories that made her want to question, to want to doubt, to want at all. It was just the experiences of Iris West-Allen, not her own, that seeped into her and felt-- something-- for the man she’d shared a hom-- _no,_ she corrected herself-- a house with. For the people she’d come to work with. She hadn’t had to work for it, their names and stories were in the memories. It wasn’t caring, not on her end. Iris had cared, that was all. She told herself that, repeated it now, but still the ache persisted. She didn’t care. She was only there to use, to manipulate on behalf of her Mother, do what was asked, what was required, what was ordered. Ignore the heartbreak in their eyes and drive the knife deeper, picking out every speck of trauma to use as Eva saw fit. It wasn’t supposed to hurt her to use. The feelings weren’t meant to become her own.   
  
She clenched her hands, swallowing a sob that did not belong to her. (Nothing belonged to her, she belonged _to_.) Sometimes the memories were so much. She had never asked her brother and sister if they felt. She did not think they did. Surely, if they were as defective they might have hesitated, questioned, too, tricked by the love they remembered but did not hold. Rob, Cisco. Surely they would have faltered, too-- so it was only her that was broken, useless as a splintered bit of glass, the memories leaking through. She could remember love and some small part of her that never should have existed wanted it to be more than a memory. Would anyone speak about her, look at her, with what her memories told her was _happiness_ if she did not wear this face, claim this name? No. She knew that now, the way Barry Allen looked at her, knowing she was not his wife. She was not Iris. She was a tool, a mirror-copy, made for one purpose, and that purpose was not to stand in a living room and feel things or want, to love or be loved. She was here to assure her Mother’s success.   
  
But she had a ring on her finger and another on a chain around her neck and a third tucked away in a box and the diamonds on them shone like a mirror shattered. Even when she looked away, the memories glittered, just within reach, bound up in threads of sorrow and grief and love. It did not matter that the love was not for her. She could almost pretend. She should not pretend. It was over, now, or would be soon. She only had one more order to fulfill, no more part to play. Then she would never have to pretend again. Success was assured, her piece done.   
  
Like her sister’s had been, she thought, as dull as an unshined surface. She would be done. What was she without this name, this face, this role? Nothing. A tool who served its purpose. Her sister had accepted that fate willingly. She should, too. But had her sister had a will to start with? Didn’t one need a will to be willing? Questions, questions, she was not made for questions, only to reflect an answer, distorted or true. What did it matter?  
  
It mattered. Like a stone into the surface of a pond, the ripple spreading outward, breaking the reflection and lodging in her core. It mattered. She did not want to stop. She did not even want the hurt to stop, the hurt that radiated outwards, knowing all the things she remembered were false. It was never her anyone loved. _It was never me who loved. Only her. Only her._ _  
_ _  
_ It was too much. Obey, obey, obey and it will end. She looks at the man she shared a bed with, standing in the living room, surrounded by so many, many mirrors. She looks at the form she has in those same mirrors, loving it, hating it, and turns her arms into swords, splinters of glass that catch the light and throw it back. She throws his feelings back, too, all the emotions he has, all of the emotions that should have never been anything but a reflection on her surface. She would tell herself her words are only a weapon, as she stabs, as she spits, “She’s all you think about? What about me?” But she is a mirror. And now, she can only reflect true, no more distortion, not even to herself. She wants. She wants. She wants. She will obey.  
  
She is a weapon, a reflection made to mislead and misguide and hurt. She _will_ obey.  
  
Success is assured.  
  
He is bleeding out on this rug. Barry Allen will die, her Mother will win. All of this is reflected in the mirror she was formed from, the old glass that memories tell her once hung in Barry Allen’s childhood home. It has witnessed death after death. Silver gleams, like memories of moonlight, like memories of lightning she can feel on her skin. she has felt. Not Iris. She has stood in the moonlight. She has felt the lightning.   
  
His voice breaks. _Part of her heart is inside you,_ he says, _you can be more than this_ holding out a hand and offering her herself. More than a tool. More than a reflection. More than memories of diamonds and songs. She can be--what is she?  
  
What is she? No. That is the wrong question. Not what. Not anymore. _Who._ She is-- she is-- _  
_ _  
_ She takes the stone at her center, the ideas, the love, the cause of all those ripples, and knows it for what it is. _“I chose me,”_ she gives voice to the words she hardly dared to think, and she throws the stone that is herself. She chooses. She defies. She _is._ The glass barrier, the mirror between what she holds and what --who--she is, breaks, every want, every doubt, every emotion she was never meant to feel slamming against it, that surface--her form-- full of spiderwebbing cracks--  
  
\--Until it shatters--  
  
\---And takes her with it, _longing, loss, love_ into a million tiny pieces of glass and a diamond left behind.   
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please comment! I wanna know what you think :)


End file.
